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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
I was let go from a previous job for poor performance. How do I deal 
with this in future interviews? 
 
Answer: 
 
So you’ve got a bad job experience in your past, and now you’re in an 
interview and they start asking you about why you were let go. Maybe 
you got let go because of poor performance.  
 
There are three ideas I can give you that can help manage that 
situation. 
 
The first is to be honest. You don’t have to offer the information, but if 
they ask for it, don’t be dishonest in the way you respond. That’s not 
going to help you get the job. 
 
As a matter of fact, there’s a certain intuitive sense or feel that they 
get if you start being dishonest in your answers.  
 
Second, accentuate the positive. Yeah, maybe there was poor 
performance involved in you being let go, but there were positive 
aspects to that job as well.  
 
Try to spend 70% of your time talking about the positive aspects in 
that job and what you achieved, and no more than 30% of your time 
talking about the failure that resulted in you being let go. 
 
The third this is to be real. This interview is only the beginning of the 
relationship, and the last thing you want is to be given a job that 
 
 
you’re not capable of fulfilling. So don’t fake it, don’t pretend to be 
what you’re not.  
 
You’re just as much in the search for whether this is a good job for you 
as they are for whether you’re a good employee for the job. 
 
You don’t want to accept a job that you’re not going to be able to 
perform at high level, or you could be repeating the past experience.  
 
So be real in searching whether or not this is a great job for you. You 
want to be honest, you want to be positive, and you want to be real. 
That’s the best way to handle when something negative comes up in 
an interview. 
Price -2- 
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